Peter Carey's sardonic novel Bliss charts the escapades and misadventures of Harry Joy, an advertising executive who, having survived a near-death experience, gets sucked into a Kafkaesque routine of increasing bizarreness.
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Is he really in hell? In a place where his wife is constantly unfaithful, his son is a drug dealer and his daughter offers sexual favours to pay for her narcotic needs?
Bliss is a much-anticipated new operatic collaboration with all the ingredients for excitement: a score by Brett Dean, surely one of the most innovative composers working today; an enthralling libretto by Amanda Holden; the directorial wit and sparkle of Neil Armfield; the virtuosity of Elgar Howarth and the BBC Symphony Orchestra; and the electrifying stage presence of Peter Coleman-Wright. This opera is based on Peter Carey's remarkable novel.
There is a brilliant two-hour play that is stuck in this three-hour repetitive opera.
It is the big set pieces...that really unite score, staging and performances.
Let's hope that Bliss becomes the first Aussie opera to genuinely go walkabout.
Perhaps this opera's greatest triumph is the success with which it marries a modern vernacular text with a structure that is as old as Aida.
This is a triumph for Opera Australia and the Festival, as well as good news for anyone who believes in opera’s future.
Opera preview: Bliss
Brett Dean on the trials of getting his opera Bliss on to the stage.
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh from Thursday September 2, 2010, until Saturday September 4, 2010. 7.15pm. No performance on the 3rd.. More info: http://www.edtheatres.com/festival
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